1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a control apparatus for an internal combustion engine, which controls a controlled amount of the internal combustion engine by operating an ignition device including a spark plug provided in a combustion chamber of the internal combustion engine, an ignition coil connected to the spark plug, a discharge control circuit that retains discharge current after a start of discharging of the spark plug, and a discharge control unit that controls the discharge current by operating the discharge control circuit.
2. Description of Related Art
For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2003-28037 (JP 2003-28037 A) suggests an ignition device including a capacitor discharge ignition (CDI; hereinafter, referred to as main circuit) that energizes a primary coil of an ignition coil and an auxiliary circuit that is utilized in ignition control instead of the main circuit when an abnormality of the main circuit has been detected.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2014-206061 (JP 2014-206061 A) suggests an ignition device including a discharge control circuit that retains discharge current after a start of discharging of a spark plug and a discharge control unit that controls the discharge current by operating the discharge control circuit.
Incidentally, in the case of the ignition device described in JP 2014-206061 A, it is conceivable that there can be a situation that an abnormality of the discharge control circuit or discharge control unit is detected but an abnormality of a circuit that starts discharging of the spark plug is not detected. In this case, it is conceivable that, instead of the auxiliary circuit described in JP 2003-28037 A, the circuit that starts discharging of the spark plug is allowed to be utilized in fail-safe process at the time when an abnormality of the discharge control circuit or discharge control unit has been detected.
Incidentally, the inventors found that ignition devices brought into dealers by users who are informed of abnormalities of the ignition devices include normal ones. This suggests that there is an ignition device of which an abnormality had been once detected and that has returned to a normal state thereafter. However, when the fail-safe process as in the case of the technique described in JP 2003-28037 A is continued, even when an ignition device that had been determined to be abnormal has returned to a normal state, this normal state cannot be detected. For this reason, it is not possible to effectively utilize an ignition device that has returned to a normal state.